The aunts have a tradition of making black soap each year, which is supposed to have special beautifying properties: “Maybe it was the black soap she washed with that made her skin seem illuminated; whatever the reason, she was hot to the touch and impossible to ignore” (25). Today, charcoal-based beauty products are popular and can be found in health food stores worldwide. At the book’s publication of 1995, however, these were less common and likely would have been met with both intrigue and suspicion from its target audience—women concerned with beauty and aging. This shows that the aunts are not only ahead of their time but have the modern equivalent of sacred knowledge that is still out of reach for many people.

At the same time, this black soap becomes a symbol of the aunts, the Owens home, and their particular otherness. Once Gillian rejects her heritage, she rejects the black soap even though she once benefited from it. She can’t stand to be reminded of her past, so she throws the soap away as an embodiment of painful memories: “The black soap the aunts send as a present every year has been taken out of the soapdish and has been replaced with a bar of clear, rose-scented soap from France” (82).